CONCEPT

I didn’t only want the pictures, but also the story of the film to emerge from the geographic landscape. I chose the Ruhr region, because the landscape there has always been a hybrid between man and nature: Abandoned industrial facilities and deeply digged in soil were recolonized by plants and animals. Nature returned to areas which were used, destroyed and abandoned by men. It infiltrates into the margins, cuts a swath through, and conquers the region, always in close contact with the still inhabited urban areas.
On the one hand, a futuristic landscape is the consequence, because – in a postmodern way – man and nature get together again. On the other hand, long-lost impressions of nature re-emerge. Tremendously appealing, they are lying close to the urban elements of the Ruhr region. If you have a close look at it, man and nature seem to reject and attract each other at the same time. They approach one another, destroy each other, and are longing for each other at the same time. Wilderness and civilisation, ancient and modern things blend into a dynamic, shattered and self-contradictory topography.
I explored this topography for five years.
Which characters would appear here?
How could the abovementioned areas of conflict affect them?
And which story would take its course?